


Lay with Dogs

by mimeo



Series: Love with Teeth [2]
Category: Preacher (Comics), Preacher (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Smut, WHAT MORE DO YOU NEED
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 04:19:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7603141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimeo/pseuds/mimeo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's smelled the pungency of human fear before, but not this. Cassidy's genuine fear smells like a new car begging to be taken for a spin.</p><p> </p><p>"Ashes," she answers his unspoken question in her slow drawl. "We're just gonna be ashes."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay with Dogs

**Author's Note:**

> Filling in some of the blanks from the first installment in this series. Read that first, if you please. Notes from the first installment: "I guess this thing is an AU that begins in the comic verse circa issue #40, but with strong influences from the personality and appearances of the TV characters."

A week had passed since Jesse had returned from the dead only to find Tulip bitten by Cassidy. The dust settled as much as it could.

Their inevitable reunion sex had been loud, but it sounded like they were trying to convince themselves. Like laughing at your own joke.

Cassidy had been just outside the door, put squarely in his place as the pathetic third wheel again. Jesse wouldn't even speak to him and it took every ounce of his self-control not to break the monster's bones daily. Tulip spoke to him in monosyllabic demands and directions. But, terrible as it was, Cassidy took selfish solace in that fact that all of this had to be temporary. Only two of them were immortal, after all. He was quite good at waiting when he wanted to be.

He still did his share of sulking, but the majority of it was for the loss of a best friend. Jesse, for all his outward cynicism, saw the capacity for good in people. His first thoughts when given the Word were about responsibility, whereas Cassidy's had involved baser desires. Jesse was a good man. An American "man's man" if ever there was one, Cassidy mused. His face belonged on a 1976 Marlboro billboard. Maybe that was a stupid thing to idolize, but Jesse was the first person in decades who saw something in him, who made him feel like he was really and truly on his team. Shame it was all so short-lived.

See, the thing about Cassidy was that he was either a loner or a follower, never a leader. The responsibility just didn't suit him. Back in Ireland he'd followed his older brother. And, well, the loner life had grown stale after a century overseas. He didn't have a speck of pride left in his weary body, not after he'd dealt Tulip such a low blow and sobbed through Jesse bashing a cheap motel lamp into his skull 38 times, so what was the harm in taking a stab at being a follower again? There was no other choice, really. He owed it to them to be their errand boy and to ensure Tulip's new sustenance kept flowing in one way or another.

Still, Cassidy couldn't even begin to bridge the chasm between him and Tulip. In the months they'd shared, his greatest accomplishments had been when he could coax a smile or laugh out of her. Once a week if he was lucky. Now it seemed like there was no hope of ever hearing that laugh again. He'd made her miserable just because misery loved company. Selfishly craved it, more like. This is what he had damned them to. In retrospect this was all infinitely more torturous than it would've been to lose the two of them, to sneak out of the motel that day and let Jesse and Tulip ride off into their sunset, but hey, hadn't sabotage always been his specialty?

Tension hung perpetually over the lovers, no matter how many times they told each other how happy they were to be back. Cassidy could practically smell the undercurrents of Jesse's pity and disgust for her, even if she pretended not to. There was an odd jealousy mixed in too, over how they now shared the same affliction. It was something Jesse could never understand and never wanted to. He couldn't help but distance himself with every passing day.

When he left her, not much changed. She did not turn back to Cassidy out of desperation. She did not warm at all. If anything, she was more numb. Cassidy wasn't exactly jumping for joy, either. He hadn't even received so much as a farewell nod or a "take care of her, you hear." He stayed solemn, somber, silent unless spoken to - for a motormouth such as himself, this last bit was a truly miraculous testament to the depths of his remorse. When they drove, he was surprised she let him sit shotgun. He'd been relegated to the backseat for the last year. When they walked, he lagged several paces behind unless she clicked her tongue to summon him like a pet.

Cassidy was walking so far behind that night, the man who grabbed Tulip and dragged her behind the dumpster didn't even see him.

They would never find out the attacker's intentions, however, as Cassidy was on him in half a blink of an eye. The interior of his throat met the cool night air before he could scream. With savage growls muffled through geysers of blood, Cassidy chewed until he was sure his teeth clicked hard against the man's axis vertebra.

It was over in eight seconds. Tulip was frozen, stunned. Cassidy sat up on his knees, still straddling the man. His panting breath was visible in the air and ropes of blood dangled from his chin. He inhaled sharply and swallowed hard, but did not drink. He stood up shakily. There was a hint of embarrassment there in the aftermath. Awkward silence. Both of them stood still as statues before Cassidy rubbed the back of his neck and stepped aside to let her walk ahead once more. She didn't. She put her hands in the pockets of her plum-colored thrift store peacoat and studied him, puzzled, lips pursed and eyes narrowed. 

It had not needed to be said amongst them that Cassidy would be at her beck and call, endlessly repenting for having turned her, but now she had some real proof. Here was a creature whose _instinct_ was to kill for her. She was always at her best with one of those on her arm, wasn't she? Only this one knew when to shut up. This one had no airs of outdated machismo. Her pursed lips parted and she tipped her head up, still ten feet away from him, wondering how long he would avoid her gaze like a beaten dog. When he finally glanced up and saw the look in her eyes, he gave her a crooked smile in return. The man's blood pooled out, black in the night.

A few blocks further, they entered a hotel. Cassidy had wiped the blood off his face with his shirt best as he could and buttoned his trenchcoat all the way up. Tulip had dined neatly, no traces left on her. She approached the receptionist and asked for one room, two nights.

_One room?_ he thought. She dropped her bag on the tile floor at his feet and stomped down the hall to the elevator. To the receptionist, he held a finger up and opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it, finger slowly curling back down, eyes slowly drifting sideways to the hall, Tulip's footsteps still present in his ears. He hurriedly collected their bags in his arms and slid into the elevator right before the doors closed. Tulip leaned against the wall and said nothing. This was one of the nicer joints they'd stayed in; did she not have enough money for two rooms? She could've asked. He always had a couple hundred on him these days. He wanted to say all this and more but there was a lump in his throat and his knuckles were turning white around the handle of his duffel bag.

Tulip unlocked the door with her key card and strode over to the desk, taking off her coat and boots. Cassidy put the bags at the foot of the bed and sat in the chair near the window on the other side of the room. His long arms draped over the sides and nearly touched the floor as he slouched. The awkward silence seeped under the door again.

If she was brutally honest with herself, Tulip missed touch more than anything in the world. Yet she felt she didn't deserve it - and, simultaneously, that no one deserved her. It would be foolish to let anyone in now. But there was ol' familiar Cassidy at the other end of the damned Chinese finger trap of immortality. From what little she could remember, he wasn't so bad a lay. Could be tender and generous when he wanted to. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought about it. She'd be lying if she said she wasn't curious what it would be like now, in this new dynamic, with her sharp as a tack and clearly having the upper hand, no longer his drugged victim. She'd be lying if she said the rage in his eyes when the stranger grabbed her had not stirred something.

So she perches on the arm of his chair. He looks up at her, shifts his posture, and folds his hands in his lap. She gently grabs his wrist, brings his hand out of his lap and into hers, and presses their palms together. Her thumb traces his tattooed knuckles. 

She moves slow. Calculating. They're both reading each other, on guard, testing brand new waters on an old shore.

When she pushes his coat off his shoulders the look on his face is one of such petrified shock and grateful disbelief that she actually lets a coy smile slip. If only he had a heartbeat, she could've heard it in stereo, quick as an asthmatic hummingbird having a panic attack.

She pulls his filthy shirt off over his head and sees the dried brown blood smeared across his chest from earlier. She can't help herself; her soft tongue presses against his skin to lick it clean. He inhales sharply and tenses up, hands gripping the arms of the chair now, eyes staring past her head at the generic abstract painting above the hotel bed, exhales a shaky "oh."

She's smelled the pungency of human fear before, but not this. Cassidy's genuine fear smells like a new car begging to be taken for a spin. She's crawling fully into his lap now, straddling him. He keeps blinking fast, repeating "oh," lips moving in search of his next word but coming up blank. She knows he thinks if he lays a hand on her, she'll bite it off and slap him with it. So she grabs his pencil-thin wrists from the chair and places his palms under her shirt, against her red longline bra. His fingers curl and he looks her in the eyes. It feels new, it feels dangerous, it gives them a hint of guilt in the pits of their stomachs - but their favorite things always had.

His hands slide up across her neck and rest at her shoulders. It had been over a year since he'd last touched her bare skin. That day... He'd never understood the word bittersweet until he tasted her blood. Their curse came with no cosmetic changes, yet he swears up and down that her bright obsidian irises have since turned to pitch black and grown to a wider circumference, that her soft toffee-toned skin glimmers in the dark, that her nails grow faster and harder. She straightens her posture and rolls her shoulders back, her knees pressing against his hips. Her stare is blank but heavy-lidded. She runs her fingers through his hair and his head lolls whichever direction her hand goes. She's daring him to kiss her and maybe it's all a test, maybe she'll slap him for his presumptive insolence and make him sleep in the bath tub, but he can't stand it any longer. His wide hands slide to her shoulder blades, he cranes his neck, and their lips meet. A stranger's blood was the last thing in their mouths; they hadn't made a stop for whiskey to chase it down. She doesn't know if the copper aftertaste is what's making him furrow his brow and exhale hard through hungry muffled moans so soon or if that's all her. There's no "tongues battle for dominance" here. They predict each other's every move and respond in kind.

When she breaks away, her mouth still agape but teeth pressed together, she jerks her head to motion toward the bed. He hoists her up in an instant, hands on her ass, her calves crossed over his plank-straight back.

* * *

 He's got one hand on the headboard and one at her hip, hovering above, giving her a Kubrick stare and sloppy smirk as they move in tandem, and in the privacy of her mind she allows herself - just for one second - to admit she missed this. Her nails rake down his flushed chest until she breaks skin. He doesn't flinch. Her back's arching now and she grabs for the back of his neck to pull him closer. He'd wanted to hold out and give her more than one orgasm - he'd wanted to give her the world on a silver platter, really - but he comes as soon as she does, completely overwhelmed by hearing her moan in his ear through gritted teeth for the first time in ages.

* * *

 They stare at the ceiling. There's an awed open-mouthed smile on Cassidy's red face like a kid at Christmas, while Tulip is stone-faced and chewing the inside of her cheek. After a minute he turns to face her, slinging his arm around her limply and still smiling. His heavy touch feels like a rollercoaster's lap-bar to her and she writhes out of it.

"It don't mean nothin'," she declares as she pulls her shirt back on. He props himself up on one bony elbow and chews his lip with that hesitant expression she sees so often these days.

" _'Don't_ '? Or _'didn't'_?" he asks. "Didn't" is past-tense. Over. Done. "Don't" or "doesn't" is present-tense and leaves room for more.

"Don't," she snarls, and he's not sure if she's answering him or telling him not to press the matter. He hides his small smile by reaching over to turn off his bedside lamp.

This is all he'll get. Pittance in exchange for penance.

She turns the hot water all the way and lets the shower burn her shoulders until she can't feel them anymore. When her eyes finally refocus she notices his blood under her nails.

* * *

They share a joint together in bed and let the ashes fall on white sheets in a brand new city.

"You ever think... you ever think it's weird this is all we are now?" she mutters, her eyes glassy as she rubs her fingertips through the fallen ash. Cassidy is silent, watching her with a furrowed brow, unsure what she's referring to. "Ashes," she answers his unspoken question in her slow drawl. "We're just gonna be ashes."

"Well. Fer what it's worth, you're lookin' more like a phoenix ta me."

"Ugh. Don't mention that word," she says, and for a moment he remembers Arizona and thinks he's an idiot who's put her back in a sour mood already, but then he sees a smile play at her scarlet lips when she takes another drag off the joint. Could be she's finally ready to look back and laugh. It's 2020, after all.


End file.
